Jacket2 - State-of-the-nation poemshttp://jacket2.org/taxonomy/term/4816/0
enState-of-the-Nation poems (5)http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-5
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<h3 class="subtitle">Kendrick Smithyman, ‘If I Stepped Outside, in May ’93’ (2002)</h3> </div>
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<figure><img src="http://jacket2.org/sites/jacket2.org/files/imagecache/wide_main_column/ks2.jpg" alt="Margaret Edgcumbe" title="Study, typewriter, banana palms - photograph: Margaret Edgcumbe (1996)" class="imagecache imagecache-wide_main_column" /><figcaption>Study, typewriter, banana palms - photograph: Margaret Edgcumbe (1996)</figcaption></figure> </div>
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<p>My good friend and fellow-poet <a href="http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/howard/index.asp" target="_blank">David Howard</a> writes in to question my use of the epithet “unquestioned Top Bard” for Bill Manhire in my <a href="https://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-4" target="_blank">previous post</a>. He also comments that “we weren't 'all' lost in the postmodern forest of the 1980s” …</p>
<p>I did wonder (as I said in my reply to him) if anyone would react to my canonisation of Manhire:</p>
<blockquote><p>I can't say I think Top Bard an enviable job, but it does seem to me to have passed from <a href="http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/fairburn.html" target="_blank">Rex Fairburn</a> to <a href="http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/curnowa.html" target="_blank">Allen Curnow</a> in the 50s, and thence to <a href="http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Manhire,%20Bill" target="_blank">Bill Manhire</a> in the 2000s -- I'm speaking of influence and cultural dominance, you understand, not necessarily poetic merit ...</p>
<p>And as for those thickets, I guess I was thinking more of Academics than poets (the principal audience for the website). Again, meant to be a bit teasing ...</p>
</blockquote><p><a href="http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-5" target="_blank">read more</a></p>Kendrick SmithymanKenneth QuinnMargaret EdgcumbeState-of-the-nation poemsFri, 15 Jun 2012 22:26:01 +0000johnros7057 at http://jacket2.orgState-of-the-Nation poems (4)http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-4
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<h3 class="subtitle">Ian Wedde, ‘Barbary Coast’ (1993)</h3> </div>
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<figure><img src="http://jacket2.org/sites/jacket2.org/files/imagecache/wide_main_column/wedde1.jpg" alt="devonport" title="Auckland Skyline - photograph: Michael Dean" class="imagecache imagecache-wide_main_column" /><figcaption>Auckland Skyline - photograph: Michael Dean</figcaption></figure> </div>
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<p>1946 was a good year for poets. Along the fruits of that bumper crop were <a href="http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/brunton/index.asp" target="_blank">Alan Brunton</a>, peripatetic troubadour and (co-) founder of radical theatre troupe <em>Red Mole</em>; <a href="http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/manhire/index.asp" target="_blank">Bill Manhire</a>, Dean of the Wellington school and unquestioned Top Bard of the country; <a href="http://www.samhunt.co.nz" target="_blank">Sam Hunt</a>, restless road warrior and heart-sore lyricist – and <a href="http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wedde/index.asp" target="_blank">Ian Wedde</a>, New Zealand <a href="http://nzpoetlaureate.natlib.govt.nz/p/ian-wedde.html" target="_blank">Poet Laureate</a> for 2011-13.</p>
<p>It’s Wedde [pronounced <em>Wed-dee</em>, not <em>Wed</em>, in case you were wondering] I’d like to talk about here. He’s far harder to characterize in a couple of gimcrack phrases than most other local poets. That’s if he really <em>is </em>a local poet. There’s always been something of an air of the largeness of <em>outside</em> in Wedde’s work from the very beginning.</p>
<p><a href="http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-4" target="_blank">read more</a></p>Ian WeddeState-of-the-nation poemsFri, 08 Jun 2012 23:54:25 +0000johnros7042 at http://jacket2.orgState-of-the-Nation poems (2)http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-2
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<h3 class="subtitle">James K. Baxter, ‘Ode to Auckland’ (1972)</h3> </div>
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<figure><img src="http://jacket2.org/sites/jacket2.org/files/imagecache/wide_main_column/rangitoto2.jpg" alt="Rangitoto from North Head" title="&quot;the song of Tangaroa on a thousand beaches&quot; - Rangitoto from North Head" class="imagecache imagecache-wide_main_column" /><figcaption>"the song of Tangaroa on a thousand beaches" - Rangitoto from North Head</figcaption></figure> </div>
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<p>If the Allen Curnow poem I talked about in my <a href="https://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems" target="_blank">latest post</a> looks back on the fifties, that whole post-war “You’ve never had it so good” period, then it seems logical to go on to discuss further “state-of-the-nation” poems commenting successively on the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and (finally) the twenty-tens.</p>
<p>This is the list I’ve come up with. Not all the dates fit perfectly, but at least it provides <em>some</em> sort of a coverage of styles, ideas, voices and views, over the last fifty years of New Zealand poetry. Each one of them will take a fair amount of contextualising and unpacking, but it’s the only way I can think of to give you a reasonable overview of where we’ve been and where (possibly) we might be going.</p>
<p><a href="http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems-2" target="_blank">read more</a></p>AucklandJames K. BaxterState-of-the-nation poemsFri, 11 May 2012 23:39:05 +0000johnros6985 at http://jacket2.orgState-of-the-Nation poemshttp://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems
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<h3 class="subtitle">Allen Curnow, ‘A Small Room with Large Windows’ (1962)</h3> </div>
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<figure><img src="http://jacket2.org/sites/jacket2.org/files/imagecache/wide_main_column/albany_0.jpg" alt="Albany Coronation Hall 1911" title="&quot;What you call a view&quot; - Albany Coronation Hall (1911)" class="imagecache imagecache-wide_main_column" /><figcaption>"What you call a view" - Albany Coronation Hall (1911)</figcaption></figure> </div>
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<p>I think that we’ve had enough generalizations about various different types of New Zealand poetry for a bit. It’s time to descend to cases. But which poems should we talk about?</p>
<p>There’s not much point in doing a mini-anthology of my favourite contemporary poets. In any case, that’s something I’ve already been asked to do for <em>Jacket2</em>. It appeared last year as the feature “<a href="https://jacket2.org/feature/look-and-look-again" target="_blank">Look and look again: Twelve New Zealand Poets</a>.”</p>
<p>Instead I thought it might make sense to concentrate on big-issue public poetry: those “state-of-the-nation” poems which poets more often find themselves writing by accident than actually sitting down to compose (or so I suspect, anyway).</p>
<p>Robert Lowell specialized in such poems: “For the Union Dead”, for example – or “Waking Early Sunday Morning.” It’s a form of <em>engagé</em>, <em>ex cathedra</em> discourse which many modern readers are understandably suspicious of, but when you reread those Lowell poems, or Derek Walcott’s superb sequence “The Schooner <em>Flight</em>,” or even Philip Larkin’s “The Whitsun Weddings,” it becomes clear that there are ways of avoiding pompous attitudinizing within this mini-genre.</p>
<p><a href="http://jacket2.org/commentary/state-nation-poems" target="_blank">read more</a></p>Allen CurnowRobert LowellState-of-the-nation poemsThomas CarlyleSun, 06 May 2012 22:37:43 +0000johnros6952 at http://jacket2.org